


His Love Letter

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, also highly experimental and not at all my usual style, ambiguous time period, former relationship, hint: r isn't actually talking about drinking, it's a metaphor, it's not happy y'all, kind of, my beta told me that "not fluffy" didn't quite cover this one, tumultuous adventures of second person pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 18:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16770187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Your Wednesday regular appears right on time and orders the same thing as he does every week, but something's different today.Warnings: language, heavy discussion of alcohol and alcoholic tendencies, general sadness





	His Love Letter

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you to my amazing beta-reader [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait).

“Do you know anyone who doesn’t drink to cheers?”

You look up from your work. It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and the man who has spoken is a regular. He’s been nursing his weekly scotch ( _neat_ ) for nearly half an hour, which is normal. The speaking is not. 

You shake your head in response.

“Right. Everyone drinks to cheers. It’s something you’re born innately knowing to do: laugh, cry, drink after cheers.”

He throws the rest of his scotch back in one move. Most Wednesdays this signals the end of his time here, whereafter he pays and returns to whatever he does on Wednesday afternoons without you. Today is not most Wednesdays, so instead you refill his glass, receiving a nod in wordless affirmation and thanks.

“He didn’t though. Never did. I never did decipher that riddle.” He smirks sardonically, the expression saturated with irony at a joke you don’t yet understand. “Guess I still can’t.” He licks his lips. “For a long time I figured it was beneath him, maybe that he didn’t drink at all. But he drank: I’d see him drink with his friends, usually in the quiet moments. Human as anyone else.

“Me? I’m an alcoholic. I’ve cut down, it’s only my Wednesday indulgences now,” he laughs bitterly, sneering the word. “But I used to drink. All day, every day. I woke with alcohol flowing through my veins, I welcomed the first rays of light with a fifth, and I fell into bed swimming in the feeling of drunkenness. I drank to everything: the sunset and the sunrise, the warmth of a woman beneath me, the feeling of smoke in my lungs and Parisian sludge in my veins. I drank to the ugly truths, too: the painted men and women on the corners, the children in the gutters. The things that people like to hide and forget, I drank to, carrying them in me like a lost lullaby.

“ _Here is the world—what’s left of it—in brilliant motion: the oil slick at the curb danced into a thousand splintered steps._ ” He looks at you hard over his glass, middle finger running idle rings around its edge. “You know who wrote that?”

You shake your head again.

“Cornelius Eady. American bloke.” He looks like he may take a drink, then seems to think better of it and looks back at you. “I drank. It was my life, my personal credo. Even now, even after it’s burnt me so many times, I still can’t completely quit it. It’s a lifestyle. 

“He was…” His eyes fog over, features softening slightly. “Magnificent. Glorious. Of course I drank to him, everyone did. But I started finding myself drinking to him the way I drank to Paris: his righteous passion, yes, and his naïve notions for the future. But also the curve of his smile, the glow of his halo—they, too, drove me to drink. The way he stumbled over his words the moment he stepped from the podium. Oh yes, I could hardly drink to anything else for being drunk on him.”

He looks up at you again as if suddenly remembering that you are there. You’ve been pretending to wipe the same spot on the counter since the man started speaking—it’s not as if anyone else is here on a Wednesday afternoon.

“You ever felt that way? About anything?”

You begin to nod, but you see the look in his eyes, a desperate sort of vulnerability that leaves you feeling unnerved. You shake your head. 

“Good. Don’t let anyone romanticize it for you: it’s an awful thing, alcoholism. A moment’s sobriety, a moment of clarity, that’s all I wanted. It’s still all I want,” he admits to his glass. “It was pathetic. All of our friends knew, knew that my zeal for life had narrowed down to one obsession. It must have escaped his attention. He knew I was drunk—oh, did he know—but he missed that my glass filled and emptied in his presence alone, that in his absence I longed to drink to the Paris lights yet found myself lost to the memory of the bright gleam in his eyes time and time again.”

This time he does drink, brow unfurrowing as the glass returns to the table.

“I thought that the natural solution would be to know him—know him as I knew all things in our city.” He snorts at this. “And so I knew him, and he knew me, and I drank more, and he remained sober.

“And isn’t that the funny thing? I drank, and I drank, and I never saw him touch a drop. He insisted he did, our friends said he did. And I’d raise cheers to him, and he’d smile politely and refrain as ever. 

“At first, I thought if I only tried harder to share my drink with him, he might be persuaded. And then I thought maybe the trick would be to drink less. Well, to let him see me drink less.”

He sighs, sipping again. “There was no trick. I never saw him drink, not with me. I’ve seen him drunk, you see? With his closest friends, or drunk on his country. Never with me. He could say he was drunk all he wanted, but I knew. I know.” He inhales deeply, and you realize that your hand has stilled. You consider resuming the motion, but he continues on.

“Eventually I decided that his drinking habits didn’t matter. I was satisfied drinking to cheers alone. If he wanted to stay with my drunken self, I decided that might be okay, even if he didn’t want to drink with me. I toasted him loudly and often, and he’d smile politely, and that was. That was fine. 

“Hell, I,” he stops, wincing. He takes a large gulp of his scotch before continuing. “I even bought a ring. Isn't that crazy? The man doesn’t even drink with me, and I bought a fucking ring. I really should toss the damned thing,” he says, almost to himself. His mouth is twisted into something between a smile and a grimace. “But it’s still in my sock drawer. I don’t think he ever knew about it. Probably better that way.”

You’ve given up all pretenses of cleaning now, eyes boring into the man. His glass isn’t quite empty, but you top it off anyhow. He sits in silence for another minute after that, staring at the mirror behind you and sipping at his scotch as you watch him.

“I don’t think he was ever going to be disposed to drinking with me anyhow. Entertained the notion, tried his best, but there’s nothing to be done about it: he wasn’t going to get drunk with me, and nothing I did could have persuaded him. Hard to know how long the charade might have continued if it hadn’t been ended for him. God, he—he might even have accepted.” His eyes peer up at you. “It’s something he’d do, y’know. Marry because he thought it was the right thing to do, or to make some kind of a fucking point.” 

He takes a final draw from the glass, finishing it off. You move to refill it, but he puts his hand over the glass, shaking his head. “I’ve already allowed myself to drink much more today than I should have.”

He makes no move to leave, and you take the chance to ring him up for his normal single neat and start cleaning his glass at the counter.

“He never drank when I said ‘cheers,’” he repeats, and this time you know that he's not talking about drinking.

**Author's Note:**

> Hint: if you think this is literally just R talking about his drinking habits, reread it, because when has R ever said what he means? 
> 
> Inspired by Damien Rice's _[Cheers Darling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKFEx-wsJo)_ (another deeply unhappy and incredibly depressing piece) and Thai culture.
> 
> The poem R quotes is [Victims of the Latest Dance Craze](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48371/victims-of-the-latest-dance-craze) by Cornelius Eady.
> 
> I was trying out something really new with this. Did it work out? Let me know in the comments (please don't make me beg, I live for your comments) or reach out to me at [my tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com)!


End file.
